Arizona Moon Michael Hogan
The moon fades over Arizona and the morning sun is more dangerous . Even the rain when it finally falls is no friend to man or woman either . Toads cry like lost children when the torrent ceases and flash floods drain from arroyos in swirls of mist drifting past homeless camps and shattered dreams . There was a time when this was bearable when the moon was closer in Arizona when the Church gave sanctuary to exiles and immigrants when Hohokam danced out under open skies snakes rattled a clear warning for all and good gringos spoke in soft Spanish vowels . We ’ ve been born in the wrong century : ramshackle houses on the outskirts deliver their children to a legal snarl that ’ s nothing more than a catch-all for those bronzed by the desert sun . We see them as we pass on the highways laboring on chain gangs in pink coveralls while the High Sheriff , unapologetic and fascist , leaches his poison into the political soil . It doesn ’ t seem so long ago when the moon was closer in Arizona when lobo mexicano and jaguar roamed free across Sonora when there were no walls , no barbed wire , when people did not mistake love of this brown land for love of a flag over a border checkpoint . Now the children of their children books stolen by politicians , grandmothers ’ histories erased struggle to learn the words of an alien race : The moon was closer over Arizona . Say it ! La luna estaba tan cerca sobre Arizona . La luna estaba tan cerca .
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